Getting Ahead In Traffic

11th Oct 2002

Getting Ahead in TrafficThe Kinsale Road Roundabout:

A PeoplesRepublicofCork.com Case Study

Raw sleepy eyes, dry mouth and horrendous tiredness are some of the minor discomforts you all experience on a weekday morning. That eight-more-hours-until-I-get-to-go-home feeling is shared by the majority across the City and County. When you have dealt with the issue of hauling yourself out of bed, quenching your early morning semi and finally come to terms with the idea of another day at work or college chances are if you are anywhere in the immediate south end of Cork City you will have to take on the infamous Kinsale Road Roundabout.†

Each morning the queues start just before 8 O'Clock and five minutes later there are tailbacks as far as the rear view eye can see. A minimum of twenty minutes of each precious morning of one's life is spent in one of the lanes of it's approach roads. Glance at the other cars surrounding you: animal kids going crazy in back seats, old dolls fingering with make-up kits desperately trying to cover up their morning mank; middle-age businessmen quickly retracting snot coated index fingers from deep inside the nasal passage, smoothly darting their bounty onto the waiting tongue. Turn away in disgust, wipe the fog off your windscreen and turn the heater up to four'